


roses, roses, and thorns

by lovereddie



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: I don’t know what the fuck this is honestly, M/M, Semi-Canon Compliant, Smut, will be dark but will also be fluffy and sweet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 21:00:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18169817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovereddie/pseuds/lovereddie
Summary: richie sees werewolves and statues and giant eyes and clowns. eddie sees a leper that always gives him a horrible grin.but at least they aren’t alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t know what this is, i just wrote it on my phone and decided to make it some kind of fic and post it anyway

It’s a quiet sort of night, the moon tucked away behind the clouds and stars faintly twinkling through the haze. In their shared New York apartment, the lamp casts a soft sort of glow, illuminating the bedroom just enough for them to be able to see one another if they so chose to look. However, they’re a little distracted at the moment, and aren’t too worried about being able to see one another.

Richie is on his back, legs splayed open and knees hooked around Eddie’s hips, drawing him in impossibly closer. Above him, Eddie lets out a huff of air, elbows planted on each side of Richie’s head to hold himself up, head ducked down to lazily kiss and lick along Richie’s neck, though he mostly just pants against the skin there, warm puffs of air brushing over constellations of freckles and moles and odd little scars collected over the years. The pace is a little slow, seeking intimacy and the feeling of being so close to each other rather than just chasing pleasure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel good, and after a particularly deep thrust happens to angle itself directly into Richie’s prostate and draws out a high pitched whine from the back of Richie’s throat, Eddie can’t help but press a smug sort of grin to the underside of Richie’s jaw and murmur, “Good?”

“Yeah,” Richie breathes, a sort of content sigh that pushes past his lips so softly that it’s barely audible. He arches his back a little, wiggles his hips to change the angle again, and lets out the tiniest of gasps when the next thrust hits the same spot inside of him, sending an electric shock up his spine and making his head spin. “God, _so_ good, Eds,” he manages to choke out, a little bit smothered by the feeling of it all, and almost afraid that too much talking will ruin this blanket of comfort and quiet that they have settled over them.

Eddie doesn’t seem to mind Richie’s words, just groans against Richie’s collarbone and lightly scrapes his teeth over the curve of it, picking up the pace just slightly, enough to make them both feel a little more breathless and dizzy. Always a sucker for being marked up during sex, Richie tilts his head back, eyes fluttering shut as Eddie instantly takes advantage of the silent invitation and latches his lips to one of the spots that he knows Richie is the most sensitive, lathering his tongue over it and biting down gently, soaking in the sounds it draws out of Richie as he does so. Once a satisfying purple bruise has been drawn to the surface, Eddie pulls off with a pop and admires his work, hips snapping forward a bit harsher than intended as he sees the contrast between the hickey and Richie’s pale skin. “So beautiful,” he finds himself murmuring, before ducking his head back down to give the same treatment to various different parts of Richie’s throat, collarbones, and shoulders.

In the days to come, Richie knows that Eddie will find every chance he has to brush his fingers against the hickeys he left behind, press into them just enough to make them ache in the best way possible, teasing Richie further and further with the touches and the hums and the proud little smiles, until Richie will finally snap and push Eddie back on the couch, the bed, the table — wherever they are, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Richie will leaves marks of his own on Eddie when this happens. He won’t fuck him, because the only time Eddie bottoms is when he makes it explicitly clear that he wants to be the bottom that night and initiates the conversation himself, but he’ll grind their hips together until Eddie is panting and dizzy and desperate, and he’ll be in awe when Eddie topples over the edge and cums in his boxers, head thrown back and light catching on all the hickeys Richie sucked into his skin. It’s the same little game they’ve been playing since they moved to New York when they were eighteen and fresh out of high school, and Richie’s fairly sure it’s a game he will never, _ever_ get tired of.

But that’s a game they’ll play later. Right now, Richie is being fucked thoroughly and wonderfully by his boyfriend of many years, and he’d rather not be distracted from it.

“Eddie,” he gusts out breathily, eyes squeezing shut as Eddie becomes more precise in his movements, each thrust in meant to make Richie’s head spin. He grips onto Eddie’s shoulder, almost digs his nails into the skin there but manages to refrain, knowing that Eddie isn’t a big fan of scratch marks being left on his back after the one time Richie had accidentally pressed a little too hard and ended up drawing blood. Another hit to his prostate makes him gasp, back lifting off the bed and eyes flying open in a desperate sort of haze, wanting to see Eddie’s face as he feels his climax begin to bubble in his gut.

When he opens his eyes, however, the room looks oddly darker than it had before, as if a cloud has passed in front of the already hidden away moon and the lamp has started to dim. It casts strange shadows over the room, corners a bit too dark and eerie. His finds his eyes caught on the inky blackness, breath catching as he watches, transfixed, as the silhouette of the door starts to shift open. He waits to hear the creak, but no noise comes.

It’s happening again.

“Eddie,” Richie says again, voice wavering slightly, and he knows what he’s seeing isn’t real, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying as the door continues to silently swing wider. He can faintly still feel the thrum of pleasure as Eddie, not yet aware of Richie’s fear-stricken stillness, continues to fuck him deeply, but that isn’t at the forefront of his mind anymore. He digs his nails slightly into Eddie’s shoulders,m in the hopes of grabbing his attention, tries to say his name again, and watches in horror as a shadow of a hand circles around the edge of the door and grips onto it, some kind of claws or talons glinting in the low light.

God, he fucking hates it when this happens.

Richie’s words get stuck in his throat, his entire body shifting on top of the bed sheets with every snap of Eddie’s hips, and he wishes he knew how to ignore this. He wishes he could just close his eyes and let himself be immersed in this feeling rather than frozen with unnecessary terror, but he can’t. All he can do is try to force out the words and watch as glowing yellow eyes start to peek around the door frame, paired with a long snout and—

Teeth. Oh, god, the _teeth_.

“Stop,” Richie manages to hiss, moving his hands around Eddie’s shoulders and pushing at his chest. “Eddie, stop, stop it, stop—”

Clearly caught off guard, Eddie immediately does as he’s asked, pulling back and settling on his knees between Richie’s still splayed open thighs. His eyes are wide, hands extended in the air, like he wants to grab Richie and find out what’s wrong but knows that he can’t after Richie’s pushed him away like that. “What is it?” he asks, sounding almost afraid.

Richie shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut and digs the heels of his hands against them, knowing that there are still bright eyes that aren’t even real across the room, staring at him in a sick kind of satisfaction. It takes a moment, but eventually he manages to even out his breathing and tell Eddie, “Saw it again.”

“Oh,” Eddie breathes, gaze softening and heart aching. He lowers his hands just slightly, but still doesn’t touch Richie, well aware that the touch needs to be initiated by him whenever this happens. “How close was it?”

“Door,” is all Richie says, voice sounding wrecked — and not in the way it usually does after sex. It sounds shaky and low and terrified.

Eddie looks over his shoulder, sees the door securely shut and the lock still turned, just in case any of their friends try to stop by for a late night visit. “Door’s still closed, Rich.”

Richie nods, whimpers out, “I know it is, but you know what it’s like, Eds. You see things that aren’t happening and it still feels real.”

“I know, baby,” Eddie sighs out, the sound sad and pained, because he does know. He sees things, too — he’s had to stop Richue in the middle of plenty of blowjobs because he could have sworn he saw a man with rotting skin standing in the corner and giving him a wickedly cruel grin. He knows that all of their friends see things sometimes, knows that Ben had whispered to him about a mummy and Mike has told them about a giant bird in the sky, that Stan doesn’t see things but rather feels the precense of something dark and dead and sinister looming over his shoulder, that Beverly can never use the bathroom when she’s home alone because sometimes she swears there are gurgled whispers coming from the drains, that Bill comes to them at least once a week in tears over another kid in a yellow raincoat running down the street that he swears had been someone he knew at first glance. He also knows that Richie sees a lot of things, whereas the rest of them only see one. Sometimes Richie sees a werewolf, with long claws and bright eyes and fur. Sometimes Richie sees other things, but he won’t tell anyone what they are — claims that they’re stupid and embarrassing and not worth explaining. It had taken four months just to get him to admit that what he sees the most is the werewolf, and even then he had sounded ashamed of it, like involuntary hallucinations that he can’t control could possibly be his fault.

What Eddie doesn’t know is why they see these things. He doesn’t know how to stop it.

He wants nothing more than to stop it.

“I’m sorry,” Richie speaks up, pulling Eddie out of his thoughts and back into the present. Richie isn’t covering his face anymore, is instead staring up at Eddie with teary, red rimmed eyes and a wobbly lower lip, one hands timidly extended forward, an invitation to draw Eddie back in, wanting to seek comfort from his touch. “I hate when these things interrupt us. I- I wanted to ignore it, but it was—”

Eddie shakes his head, takes Richie’s hand in his own and immediately flips them over so that Richie is laying on top of him. “Don’t be sorry,” he says firmly, using his free hand to encircle Richie’s waist and grip his hip, pulling him closer. “ _Never_ be sorry for that, okay? I understand, Rich. You know I do.”

Shakily, Richie lets out a long breath, pressing his cheek to Eddie collarbone and trying to relax, trying to ignore the feeling of being watched, knowing that there’s nothing really there. “Yeah,” he murmurs, even know he’s not really sure Eddie does understand. He’s not sure any of them do, because he sees things a lot more often than anyone else does, and he sees a lot more than they do, too. It’s not just one single nightmare-ish hallucination that pops up a couple times a month. At this point, he’s surprised if he goes a full day without seeing sharp teeth or giant eyes or clowns or looming, statue-like figures.

Sometimes, he wonders if, maybe, the rest of them are just lying like he is. Maybe they all see multiple things more often than they let on. But then he remembers that his friends aren’t like him, wouldn’t lie just to avoid feeling embarrassed or ashamed, and he keeps quiet.

“I love you, Eds,” he says, soft and timid and always scared that Eddie won’t say it back.

But Eddie just hugs him tighter and tells him, “I love you, too. With everything I’ve got.”

And Richie feels just a little bit better after that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has anyone ever considered blond Richie before? Because I have. A lot.

“It kind of burns. It’s supposed to burn, right?”

Eddie shrugs, one hip propped against the edge of the countertop and box of bleach in hand, reading over the instructions to make sure he didn’t miss any of the steps. “I’ve heard that it is, yeah. Makes your scalp kinda itchy.”

“Um.” Richie shifts, legs swinging over the edge of the bathroom counter and hands twitching in his lap, barely resisting the urge to reach up and scratch at his head. “Itchy is an understatement. It kind of feels like that time I accidentally stood on an ant hill and got fuckin’ attacked by angry fire ants, but on my head.”

“What?” Eddie looks up, nose scrunched up slightly and brows pinched together. “When did that happen? I don’t remember that.”

Richie parts his lips, only to instantly snap them shut when he realizes the memory has already been forgotten. He knows it happened, but he isn’t sure when. Lifting a single shoulder in some kind of shrug, he answers, “I‘m not sure. When I was, like, super young, I think, so it was probably before I met you. Stan probably remembers. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who ran off to get my parents. Maybe.”

Eddie looks like he wants to ask more questions, but that’s something that they choose to ignore, the seven of them. The touch-and-go uncertainty of their memories, anything snd everything from before they all moved to New York kind of hazy and far away and always easy to forget. So, he just nods, accepts that answer as the best he’s gonna get, and looks back down at the box to skim over it a final time. “I think we’re on track so far,” he says, glancing up at Richie’s hair with mild concern. He’s not sure why Richie didn’t just make an appointment to get this professionally done, though he’s still not sure why Richie insists on doing this in the first place, so he supposes any explanation he gets won’t make much sense to him. “It looks like it’s already starting to work. Your hair doesn’t look as dark as it usually is. It’s not blond yet, but still. It’s definitely getting there.”

Instantly, Richie is twisting around in a way that looks painful, until he can see his reflection in the mirror behind him. Eddie’s right — his hair, which has always been such a dark brown that it often looks black, is already a much lighter color than it was thirty minutes ago, when Eddie started carefully applying the bleach to his hair. It’s kind of weird to look at, because it looks like Richie’s hair has been gelled back with a semi-clear, semi-white liquid, and god, it definitely burns, but it’s not too bad. He can’t help but grin excitedly. “Fucking awesome.”

With a little chuckle, Eddie sets the box on the counter next to Richie and looks at the back of his head, wanting to make sure that his hair is lighting evenly. It’s hard to imagine what Richie is going to look like after this, and he can’t hold back the question anymore, can’t stop himself from asking, “So, what made you decide to do this? You’ve never talked about going blond.”

“Dunno,” Richie murmurs, still clearly entranced by the sight of his hair changing color right before his eyes. “I was just at the store, ‘cause I saw that you’re almost out of your favorite apple scented body wash stuff, and as I was looking for it to get you some more, I walked by all the hair stuff and saw the box sitting there. It just- it looked like fun, y’know? Something different and fun and new.” He meets Eddie’s eyes in the mirror, flashes him a wide, silly kind of grin. “Plus, it’s not like my hair matters at my job, so if it gets fucked up, none of my listeners will know. I’ll probably still tell them about it, just ‘cause it might be a funny story, but I won’t lose my job if I go in tomorrow night and I’m suddenly bald.”

“Oh, gross,” Eddie snickers, lips tugging down at the image of a bald-headed Richie. He trails his hand to the junction where Richie’s neck meets his shoulder, presses his thumb slightly to the fresh hickey sitting there, and barely manages to suppress a smug smile as Richie’s eyelids instantly flutter a bit. “No offense, Rich, but I don’t know if I can handle you going bald. That’s not supposed to happen until our fourties, and we’re not even in our thirties yet.”

Richie’s lopsided smile is a bit more dazed now, loving the ache of Eddie’s finger — a welcome distraction from the persistent itchiness caused by the bleach in his hair. “I thought you said you’d love me no matter how I look, Eds.”

Nodding, Eddie pulls back his hand and tells him, “Yeah, and I meant it, but I never said I’d still fuck you. You’ll have to get off by yourself.”

“Hmm,” Richie hums, turning back around to sit on the counter properly, tugging on the collar of Eddie’s sweater and hooking a leg around his waist when he succeeds in bringing Eddie in closer. His features are bright and teasing, but his eyes are a little dark and distracted, flickering down to Eddie’s red-bitten lips. “I think I can live with getting off by myself. Guess it depends on if you’ll watch me when I do.” He wraps his arms around Eddie’s shoulders, soaking in the warmth and soothing weight of Eddie’s hands instantly settling on his hips, and presses his lips to Eddie’s ear to whisper, “What do you think, Eds? Would you wanna watch? Let me put on a show for you? Use all of our fun little toys and have you see all the different ways they can make me fall apart?”

“Richie,” Eddie breathes, voice a bit deep, clearly affected by Richie’s words. Richie just hums again, scrapes his teeth over Eddie’s earlobe to make him shiver, only to immediately freeze when Eddie croaks out, “Holy shit, Richie, your fucking hair—!”

When Richie spins around to look, he’s shocked to find that his hair has officially turned a bright, eye-catching blond. “Woah,” is all he can really manage to get out, scanning over it repeatedly as Eddie checks the back of his head. When Eddie taps him on the shoulder, apparently satisfied with whatever he sees, Richie can’t help but grin at him. “It’s done?”

“It needs to be rinsed out, like, right now,” Eddie chuckles, sounding a bit incredulous, “but yeah, it looks done to me.” He takes a step back, giving Richie the room he needs to slide off the counter and onto his feet, before pulling on the gloves that came with the kit and nodding towards the sink. “C’mon, turn that on and get your hair under the water. I’ll make sure it all gets washed out.”

“Holy shit,” Richie murmurs, looking as though the reality of what he’s doing has just hit him. He does as he’s been asked, gripping onto the edge of the counter with one hand as he leans down and sticks his head under the sink, the other hand twisting the knob to turn the water on. He keeps his eyes shut the whole time, but it’s almost impossible to keep still as the anticipation of seeing the outcome courses through his veins. He doesn’t even get riled up by Eddie’s hands getting caught in snags and tangles in his hair, can’t focus on anything other than the smell of bleach and the fact that he’s just done something he’s never done before. Something that might wind up being a huge mistake, but that’s okay. He’s made much bigger mistakes before.

After a few more minutes, where Eddie goes in and uses the special conditioner stuff that came with the kit, he tells Richie, “Okay, that’s all of it,” before turning off the water and ripping the gloves off his hands, tossing them in the garbage quickly. He wastes no time in snatching up the towel that’s sitting on top of the closed toilet seat, giving careful instructions to try and limit the amount of water that’ll drip to the floor. It takes a moment, but they manage to get Richie straightened out without too much trouble.

Before Richie can look in the mirror, Eddie is pushing him over to sit on the lid of the toilet, brows furrowed in concentration as he starts to dry Richie’s hair with the towel. Richie pouts dramatically, whines, “Eds, I wanna see!”

“Yeah, and I wanna see what it looks like when it’s not soaked, ‘cause you kinda just look like a wet dog right now,” Eddie fires back half-heartedly, oddly focused on the task at hand. He doesn’t let up on the towel until Richie’s hair is no longer dripping onto his shoulders, and even then he tells Richie to sit still, pulling out the hair dryer stored under the sink. Richie wants to protest, but the look in Eddie’s eyes is hard to read, making it hard to tell if he should be worried or extremely turned on, so he just bites down on his lower lip and sits as still as he can as Eddie uses the blow dryer to finish drying his hair. It takes a couple minutes, though it feels like even longer, but eventually Eddie is shutting off the hair dryer and setting it on the counter, staring down at Richie will a slightly dropped jaw and wide eyes.

Richie shifts under Eddie’s gaze. “Is it bad?”

Eddie offers no verbal response, instead just tugging Richie to his feet and spinning him around to look in the mirror himself.

And... wow. _Wow_.

Over the course of Richie’s life, he’s always looked more or less the same. Sure, there were the obvious changes — he sprouted quite tall, grew into his front teeth and got a pair of glasses that suited him better. He even invested in contacts when he was twenty, though he only really uses them for special occasions, like when him and Eddie threw an anniversary dinner party for Went and Maggie last year to celebrate thirty-two years of them being together. But he’s always had the same identifying qualities, the shape of his nose and the slope of his jaw and his dark, curly hair.

But now, with this... it’s like everything has changed. Sure, his face technically looks the same as it did an hour ago, but the blond seems to make it present itself differently. His features just don’t seem so sharp now, which he doesn’t really understand, but... he kind of likes it. He kind of loves it, actually.

“You look amazing,” Eddie ghosts out, his tone light and airy, and when Richie meets his gaze in the mirror, he can’t help but feel a little dizzy by the look in Eddie’s eyes. The last time Eddie looked at him like that was last year, when Richie dressed up in a classic slutty cop uniform for Halloween and made sure to flaunt it at the party they’d attended at Bev’s place.

“You like it?” Richie asks, forcing himself to look back at his own reflection and bring up a hand to brush a hand through the bright curls.

Eddie swallows roughly. “Yeah, I do, but it’s not my hair. What do _you_ think?”

Unable to help it, Richie grins a wide, giddy grin, turning around and hopping onto the bathroom counter again, pulling Eddie in just like he had a mere ten minutes ago, only now he wraps both his legs around Eddie’s hips and really locks him into place. “I think I look good enough for you to fuck,” he answers breezily, reaching down to wrap a hand around Eddie’s wrist and bring his hand up, encouraging him to bury his fingers in Richie’s hair. Eddie just blinks at him, wide-eyed and dazed, leading Richie to brush their noses together and ask him, “Don’t I look good enough to fuck, Eds?”

“Shit,” Eddie breathes, sucking in a harsh breath as he quickly surges forward, doing as Richie had clearly wanted and sinking both of his hands into Richie’s hair, feeling the blond locks twist and curl around his fingers pleasantly. He instantly breaks the kiss with a groan, wanting to memorize the way Richie looks — and he realizes, suddenly, that all the mental images of Richie that he’s commited to memory over the years are out of date now, because he’s never thought of what Richie will look like with his hair like this.

Richie is already succumbing to his naturally submissive personality, lips parted and eyes glossy as he waits for Eddie to do something. His chest is heaving with each and every breath, his eyelids fluttering. Eddie thinks he’s a god damn wet dream. But he isn’t going to fuck him, no matter how much he wants to.

“Not today, baby,” he forces out, trying to will away his own burning desire.

“What?” Richie flinches away, as if physically struck by those words, lower lip jutting out slightly in a natural pout. “Why not?”

God, Eddie wants to sink his teeth into that pout, wants to make Richie fall apart with his fingers and his tongue. But he just offers a small, apologetic smile, telling him, “‘Cause you saw something last night, Rich. Every time you see something while we’re having sex, you need a couple days, remember? Last time we tried to have sex less than two days after you saw something like that, I almost had to call for an ambulance because you had such a bad panic attack.” He can see the way Richie blinks once before he seems to remember, understanding blossoming on his features. Eddie leans back in, kisses him again, this time much sweeter, before assuring him, “Trust me, I really want to take you to bed right now, but I’m not gonna risk something like that again.”

“Yeah, no, I get it,” Richie says, frowning slightly. “I just forgot about... all of that.”

“We all forget about a lot of things,” Eddie says, trying not to put too much weight behind those words when he says them. “It’s okay. It’s just... another weird thing about all of us.”

Richie huffs out a little laugh. “Yeah, I guess.”

Not wanting to linger on this for too long, knowing that the topic only serves to put them both in a bad mood, Eddie brushes some of the curls out of Richie’s face and sincerely tells him, “Your hair really does look great, though. Like... fuck, Richie. I never considered you as a blond before, but it suits you really well.”

“Yeah?” Richie can’t help but grin, soaking in the feeling that always comes with any sort of praise or compliment that Eddie gives him.

“Yeah,” Eddie nods, barely biting back his own wide smile. “You look hot as hell, Tozier.”

Clearly satisfied by that, Richie shakes out his hair, lets it floof up a bit, and cheekily tells him, “I always look hot as hell, Kaspbrak. This just makes me even hotter. You’re welcome.”

Letting out a light snicker, Eddie backs away, pulling Richie off the counter and to his feet before reaching up to run his fingers through Richie’s hair, already addicted to seeing the contrast between the blond curls and his own naturally tanned skin. ”What do you think the others are gonna think?”

Richie’s eyes go wide, having never considered that. “I have no idea,” he says excitedly, “but we’re inviting them over tonight to find out.”


End file.
